Jarvis Cocker

For a brief moment in 1995, a number of UK youths incredibly drew battle lines over the question "Blur or Oasis?" One week that August, Damon Albarn and the Gallagher Brothers' war of words spilled over into a race for No. 1 between two of their weakest singles-- "Country House" and "Roll With It". The UK music press dressed it up as class warfare and it's still considered the Britpop tipping point, the moment when it went from the domain of the weeklies to becoming a fixture on datytime radio and in the mainstream press.

The correct answer to the above question, however, should have been "Pulp." And it was their 1995 Glastonbury performance-- they slotted in as late headline replacements for the shell of a band formerly known as the Stone Roses-- that, with hindsight, serves as the peak of Britpop. Jarvis Cocker had formed Pulp in 1978, when he was 15 years old. After plugging away at a musical career long after most sensible people may have stopped, around the start of the 90s he hit upon the right combination of players and developed the low-rent sex god personna that carried him throughout the rest of the decade. When he stepped on stage at Glastonbury, his anthemic "Common People"-- one of the only moments of real wit, vitriol, and anger among the earnest back-patting of Britpop-- had made his band a household name, and that performance, at which they aired for the first time much of their late 1995 release Different Class, made them stars.

Almost ever since Cocker has fled the stardom he for so many years sorely desired. After the release of Pulp's 1997 hangover record This Is Hardcore and the band's highly underrated, Scott Walker-produced swan song We Love Life, Cocker stepped into a prolonged semi-retirement. He's since married, moved to Paris, and became a father, ocassionally surfacing as a songwriter or guest vocalist on a wide range of projects, including collaborations with Air, Richard Hawley, and Charlotte Gainsbourg. He's appeared in a Harry Potter film alongside members of Radiohead, contributed to documentaries about Walker, Leonard Cohen, and Britpop, offered recordings for compilations of pirate songs and children's music, and oversaw the expanded reissues of three of his former band's albums. Earlier this year he guest edited the Observer Music Monthly, organizing a panel to determine whether "music still matter[s]" and later this year he'll serve as curator of London's Meltdown Festival, a task that in the past has been filled by such fellow iconoclasts as Walker, Nick Cave, David Bowie, Morrissey, John Peel, and Lee Perry. It has even been suggested that Cocker would have been the one person capable of carrying on the legacy of Peel himself.

In short, he's been free to indulge in any number of opportunities that present themselves, picking and choosing projects based on the personal satisfaction they'd bring rather than financial gain or a need for the spotlight. That changed late last year when Cocker issued his first solo album, simply titled Jarvis. Even then, Cocker has managed to do his own thing, promoting it with a series of podcasts that found him reading Icelandic folktales and teasing it with the combative yet lovely (and all too truthful) single "Cunts Are Still Running the World". The album finds Cocker in dark comic mode and it rewards patient listeners with an exquisite set of songs on its second side, most notably "Big Julie", "Quantum Theory", and "Running the World", included as a bonus track with a truncated title.

As Cocker prepares to issue the album in the U.S. on Rough Trade-- and make his first American concert appearances in a decade-- we sat down with the legendary singer and songwriter to discuss his new solo album, the role of music in contemporary culture, and the past and future of Pulp.

Pitchfork: You enjoyed a few years of being a working musician and songwriter rather than a public figure and having to go through this promotional cycle. Have you enjoyed swinging back into this process, having your name in lights and on a record?

Jarvis Cocker: Because I haven't done it for a while, I've been able to kind of appreciate it. But I've been leading quite a domestic existence for the past four years. To think of going out on tour and stuff like that actually seems quite a good laugh; compared to child care, it's easy. So it's been interesting, you know, like, a couple years ago I went to the Brit Awards for the first time in 11 years, and--

Jarvis Cocker: No, people in England have developed this massive obsession with blood-sugar levels.

Pitchfork: No, we're still counting carbs.

Jarvis Cocker: Right, in the pharmacy in England you can buy these kind of portable gauge things, which you can, at any given point during the day you can monitor your blood-sugar level, and decide whether, you know, you're running low or something like that.

Pitchfork: But you're living now in Paris. Are you spending a lot of time going back and forth between France and England?

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, I travel backwards and forwards quite a lot. I live very near to the train station. I'm kind of playing at being an expatriate, I suppose. But anyway, to return to your question, yeah, so to go to a big awards ceremony after such a long time, you know, it was kind of funny. I could appreciate it as a bit of a laugh. But I'm glad that I'm signed to Rough Trade now, and I'm not signed to a major record label. Because that seems a bit more kind of friendly and human. That kind of corporate side of the music business, I haven't missed that at all. And it reminded me a bit, 'cause towards the end of it when they all got drunk and took their jackets off and were like dancing around, and they just looked like a lot of stockbrokers together having a party. It didn't feel like a creative atmosphere, I'll put it that way.

Pitchfork: What made you begin recording again?

Jarvis Cocker: I just realized that I still had the compulsion and the urge to do it, I suppose. I'd been in Pulp for about 25 years-- as man and boy-- and kind of knew I was going to give that a rest. And I thought, "Well maybe you should just stop doing music and do something kind of useful with your life." Then apart from the fact that I haven't got any other skills, I realized that I actually missed it.

It was almost like as soon as I'd said that to myself, that I was maybe going to retire, then something subconsciously triggered and said, "Haha, no you're not." And I started having lots of ideas for songs, so I got on with it.

Pitchfork: In those years that you were picking and choosing projects to work on, you felt like you were in a state of retirement? Because you'd never really stopped writing then.

Jarvis Cocker: No it's true, but I was kind of, I wasn't in retirement. I was looking after my son quite a lot as well, so it was like in the back of my mind, I suppose I just had to pause to kind of check myself out, check my motives, and check whether I wanted to do it. And also to live a bit of a normal life, because I've always felt that, well the way that I work anyway, my stuff has to be kind of a byproduct of a life, because if anything I suppose it's my attempt to make sense of my life-- the only attempt I make. So you have to have a life to write about. And so I just let the songs come when they were ready, really. I didn't sit there strumming an acoustic guitar saying, "Yes, I will be creative." Often, a lot of the songs weren't even written on an instrument; I just kind of came up with some words in my head and hummed a tune, and then worked out the musical bits later. So they did seem to come more as a kind of natural byproduct, you know, like a snail leaving its trail on the ground.

Pitchfork: And you just kind of picked up the bits you liked?

Jarvis Cocker: I picked up all the horrible, silvery snot, yes.

Pitchfork: Despite saying music isn't useful, when you moderated the Observer Music Monthly roundtable, you said you were driven by the suspicion that music isn't as central to peoples' lives as it once was. Perhaps the act of listening to music is more passive now, and it's not the youth or pop culture force it once was. You kind of presented those ideas but let others comment on them: Were you coming at that agreeing with those thoughts?

Jarvis Cocker: It was just a question that had been on my mind a lot at that particular time, because there seems to be a contradiction in the fact that there's more music around and more channels or downloading music or more channels on TV, and yet at the same time, in some ways it doesn't seem to be as vital as it once was. It seems to be just another entertainment option or lifestyle enhancement aid or something. And it's something that I've been thinking about. I just got given the curatorship of this Meltdown Festival in London, where I can kind of program all the music and art stuff at the South Bank for eight days, and I think it's something that I'll probably continue investigating a bit there.

Because culture shouldn't be a pacifying thing. It shouldn't be something that you just passively accept. I think it should be something that, in some ways, is quite disruptive-- makes you think and question things, and actually sparks debate. And a lot of the time now, people use culture and music and films and stuff in the same ways you use them on kids. If kids are driving you mad and chucking stuff around the house, you put a Disney CD or DVD on, and then they shut up and watch it, and you get some peace. I've done it. I feel guilty about it sometimes, but I do it. And I think that kind of thing, in some ways, has moved into adult culture as well. In a way, if you're watching a film on DVD, the time passes, and-- do you know what I mean?-- there's a bit too much just letting things wash over you rather than actually engaging with what you're watching, or what you're listening to.

That was the point of having that debate, because I don't know the answers, and I still don't know the answers, and I'll try and do further investigation. At the Meltdown I want to have as many events that involve some level of participation from the audience as possible. Because I do want to have that feeling that people are actively involved in something, rather than just consuming something. I suppose that's what it comes down to, because it's such a dominant capitalist society now, everything becomes a consumer product. And I don't think that's really appropriate to the creative arts, really.

Pitchfork: Does any fault lie with the musicians? Are there not enough people doing something that demands more attention or is more disruptive?

Jarvis Cocker: There are people who are doing it. I don't want to be like the prophet of doom, but I'm trying to look at a bigger picture of things, I suppose. But I think that's the way it works now: People do things, but they do it in a very underground way. That's also a question as to whether a counterculture or an underground culture can survive in this kind of climate where things are pounced on so quickly, because people are kind of employed to go out and look for new trends in order to identify a new demographic that you can then pitch products to. And it's that wave of people having something that they can feel they own themselves, that they've invented themselves, that isn't something that-- yeah, it's the difference between being a creator or a participant, or just a consumer I guess.

Pitchfork: Do you think that the internet has had a bad effect on that? That it's so easy for people to sort of browse...

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, but still it's more-- going on the internet you still have to decide where to go. It's not like switching on the TV and just letting it come out on you.

Pitchfork: No, but you can find out everything you want to know about, say, you, in a matter of seconds with very little need to hunt, or talk with anyone, or investigate. That kind of hunting that you used to have to do to find out about an artist, the whole process is so accelerated, that it seems maybe there's a little less magic to it.

Jarvis Cocker: Maybe, yeah, I mean it's like that thing with, you know, now you can get lots of songs on the internet that at one time you'd probably have to search through record shops for years and years before you found a copy of a certain record, and now you can probably Limewire it in about a minute. But you know, in the end, I think it's better that things are accessible, because sometimes things just get valued because they're rare. And when it's made more available then things get judged more on whether it's any good or not, and not the fact that, "there was only one pressing of this record of 300 copies in Bulgaria in 1956, therefore it must be good."

Pitchfork: Is the [2000] Meltdown Festival where you met Scott Walker?

Jarvis Cocker: That's right, yeah.

Pitchfork: During the recording of We Love Life did you have conversations with him about the act or the decision of stepping away from fame, of not being a pop personality, disengaging with the idea of wanting to be a celebrity?

Jarvis Cocker: Not at the time. I've discussed that a little bit with him since. I think there's a point where-- we live in an age where people are kind of a bit obsessed with celebrity and stuff. You can't help but be curious about it. And there are some quite funny things about getting famous and stuff, but I think there comes a point where you have to think to yourself, "Well, am I doing this because I want to go to a party and meet Britney Spears? Or am I doing it because I want to create something that excites me?" And that's what he talked about in a way, that he just-- you can kind of experience that fame thing for a bit, but eventually you have to decide why you're doing something. Are you going for the Duran Duran lifestyle, in which case fair enough, do it, or are you trying to create something a bit more than that? I don't think that necessarily means you have to become Mr. Serious, Mr. Every-Word-I-Say-Is-the-Truth or whatever, but you do have to check your motives, I think.

Pitchfork: Are you comfortable and pleased with the level of celebrity that you have now? You seem like you get to engage with people professionally whom you want to deal with; you're away from England's tabloid culture; you're on Rough Trade. You seem to be settled.

Jarvis Cocker: I'm pretty pleased at the moment, yeah. Obviously, when I released the record I was nervous, and I didn't know how people would take it, what they would think of it. But yeah, I have to say that I've played concerts and I felt comfortable performing. I haven't felt like a fake or something. And I felt involved in singing-- cause I didn't know whether I'd still want to twitch about on stage, and unfortunately I do. And stuff like getting the Meltdown or whatever, I'm very excited about doing that.

Pitchfork: You've certainly taken to these curatorial roles. Even your last Pulp show was that sort of event, wasn't it?

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, it was. We got the chance to put quite a few bands on up in Sheffield in what used to be a big steel factory. There are these kind of forces at play in the world today which are kind of sucking the juice out of some aspects of culture, but there's still a lot of good stuff going on. And it's a case of digging it out and creating scenes where that stuff can be presented in a way that you don't feel like you're being ripped off or something. And that interests me a lot.

Pitchfork: These exterior forces definitely color your record, do you feel like it's more of a western thing or just a UK/U.S. thing? Do you feel the same sort of cultural negativity in Paris?

Jarvis Cocker: It's weird, France is different, because they have this kind of rule where they're very protective of their own culture, and on the radio for instance, at least 40% of the music played has to be French. You can think, "Now that sounds quite a noble idea," but actually in practice, it's terrible because the radio is shit.

So I don't know what the answer is. But I don't think it's rampant commercialization. But then again, I don't think some kind of protectionist thing is the answer, either. So what the fuck is the answer? I don't know what I'm talking about, do I? We're going to have to have lots of very lively debates about this.

Pitchfork: Does it feel like it's getting worse? I was in England recently, and it's always been situated between America and the continent, and it feels kind of like it's culturally lurching more toward America and away from Europe in a sense.

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, it's weird, I mean obviously it's physically nearer to Europe. Don't get me wrong: I'm not anti-American. I mean, obviously the administration that's in charge at the moment is pretty dire. I suppose some of that was on my mind when I did my record, because my son was born about a week before the Iraq war kicked of. I was excited to have a kid, and then kind of worried that he probably wasn't going to live very long, like everybody else.

Pitchfork: You said you've been happier now, but the record seems, maybe because of these issues, a little angrier in some ways than some of the other records. And not just toward the west in general, but also the class issues you've always addressed: Ten years ago you wanted to sleep with someone's wife as an act of revenge, and now there's murder creeping up in a few songs.

Jarvis Cocker: I don't know if it's angrier. Well, you could take a song like "Cunts Are Still Running the World": I believe that statement. But I also think-- when I first came up with that title, I kind of laughed and said to myself, "Well there's no way I can write a song with that title. It's too stupid." But then in a way, that became a challenge to actually finish the song. So there's humor in that song as well. I don't know, because I generally don't like people that write songs that attempt to deal with social issues, you know, and so I'm kind of horrified that I do it. But then again, if you feel strongly about something, you've got to say it, haven't you? And I hope that song at least has the saving grace of being entertaining by swearing a lot. But at least I' not there with my acoustic guitar playing a ballad. I don't know, too many people bland out when they get older. Not just artists, but people in general. I think that's bad.

Pitchfork: You recently did a series of Pulp reissues. Did you enjoy the process of combing over the past in such detail?

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, it was more pleasurable than I thought it would be. I went and sifted through a lot of stuff that was up in my loft. Because I knew they wanted to do some bonus discs, and they were going to put all these shit remixes on, and I just thought, "Who wants to listen to a dance remix from 1996"? So I went and found some demos, and I kind of expected-- I thought, "Well if we didn't release them at the time, they must be shit." But I was actually quite pleasantly surprised. I mean, some of the songs weren't properly fully formed and stuff, but I thought they were interesting enough to let people hear. I thought it would be better for people to hear that than some bad attempt at a hi-NRG mix of "Disco 2000".

And I thought, I wasn't ashamed-- I mean, some of the songs are stupid, like there's a song off the Different Class disc called "Catcliffe Shakedown", which is just ridiculous. It goes on for about seven minutes, and it's got about seven different bits of music, and they're all really stupid. But it's got something about it. Kind of interesting. So I was pleasantly surprised, because I generally don't listen to old stuff. You spend so much time recording something and then performing it. I'd rather suck off a dog's knob than listen to one of my own records.

The biggest surprise that I got was a track that was on the bonus disc of This Is Hardcore, which I think was the only studio outtake we've ever had, which was a song that we just abandoned called "It's a Dirty World". And when I listened to that, I realized that I must have been pretty fucked up at that time, because it's better than about six songs that actually ended up on This Is Hardcore. So that was the biggest surprise, really. I thought it was a really good song.

Pitchfork: Do you have any plans to do a similar reissue of We Love Life?

Jarvis Cocker: We could do quite a good one of We Love Life. There were loads of songs that never went onto that record.

We haven't got any outtakes of the stuff we did with Scott Walker, but there were songs we did-- because we had abandoned doing it with [producer] Chris Thomas before then, and we also tried some things with other producers-- so there's quite a lot of stuff. It might see the light of day one day.

Pitchfork: Is that whole Pulp period of you career completely closed off? You still work with [bassist] Steve [Mackey]...

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, I mean, I saw Nick [Banks] the other day, the drummer, he's in another band up in Sheffield. And I saw [keyboardist] Candida [Doyle]-- she's even played on stage with me a couple of times. The only person I really haven't seen is [guitarist] Mark Webber, but then he never goes out of the house, so it's not surprising. I mean, Steve lives only about 250 yards away from his house, and he never sees him. But I mean, we're all still friends and stuff, so if we all suddenly have some weird, collective hysteria, we could play together again. But I'm certainly not planning it at the moment.

Pitchfork: Sheffield's had quite a bit of attention lately with the Arctic Monkeys and Long Blondes, both of which consider Pulp a kind of a touchstone. How does that feel to be a statesman figure in a way?

Jarvis Cocker: Oh dear, you make me sound like I'm about 150 years old. Well, I'm glad that Sheffield's got some attention. I mean just because somebody's in Sheffield doesn't mean it's good. I think the Arctic Monkeys are pretty good, I heard the new track by them ["Brianstorm"] the other day, which I liked. The Long Blondes, I can't listen to more than about three songs. They're nice people, but there's just something about the frequency of their voice. In a way it reminds me of Barbara Streisand. You know how Barbara Streisand obviously has technically got a great voice, but she's a master of the held note, so you've got a note that will last about eight seconds, and it fucking drives me insane. And it makes you feel out of breath as well. And somehow [Long Blondes singer] Kate [Jackson] seems a little bit like that. There are some good songs on that record, but I can't listen to the whole album.

There's a group called Little Man Tate, who are an absolute pile of shit.

Pitchfork: When you do the Meltdown Festival, what sort of ideas do you want to explore? Any specifics when it comes to-- like you said, audience participation?

Jarvis Cocker: I just want to jumble things up a bit. And, yeah, get people involved-- and a wide range of people as well. I don't want it just to be the people who normally go to the South Bank, who are theatergoers or whatever. I think life is more interesting when everybody's jumbled up together. When people separate out into cliques and things, it's okay, but it's a bit limiting. You can always learn things from other people. This is my theory, anyway.

Pitchfork: You're testing a lot of theories these days.

Jarvis Cocker: One of them's going to come true one day, and I'm going to make a breakthrough.

Pitchfork: Right, all you need is one, and then you're a genius.

Jarvis Cocker: And then my name will live forever.

Pitchfork: Do you have any other outlets, besides the Observer thing and Meltdown, to explore these ideas about how music is changing within the fabric of the cultural landscape?

Jarvis Cocker: I don't know. I might just let it lie after that. I don't know what I'll do. I had an idea for a book the other day. It's brilliant. I can't tell you though, because otherwise somebody else will nick it. But I might try and do that after I finish doing the touring for this record.

Pitchfork: Do you have other outside music projects that you're working on at the same time?

Jarvis Cocker: I haven't got plans, but I never really planned any of those other ones. It was just people approached me, so if somebody interesting comes and asks very politely, I might have a go.

Pitchfork: Now that you're writing again, are you going to try to work on another record after the promotional cycle of this one?

Jarvis Cocker: I'd like to. We're going to rehearse, and I've got this scheme that I'm going to write a couple of new songs and maybe we could rehearse them, and maybe we could play them in Australia and then in America. You know, just to keep going with it rather than doing this thing where you do a record and then wait a while until you do another one. So I'll just have to see how it goes, but in theory that's what I'd like to do, yeah. As I say, I did a bit of soul searching, which lasted about three seconds, about whether to carry on doing it, and once you've decided to carry on writing and performing, you may as well not waste any time and keep on with it. Because you know Pulp have always been a sluggish band, and I guess that's because I'm a sluggish character; I'm a bit slow. For some reason I find it hard to work quickly, and it's the one major regret that I've got, that for a band that's existed for so long, and for someone who's been involved with it for so long, our actual recorded output is pretty dire really, as in, there's not that much of it.

Pitchfork: Well, you've said you can't just turn on the creativity, but it seemed like the one moment in your career when you had to-- after "Common People" was a hit and you still had yet to write most of Different Class-- you rose to the challenge of being in the spotlight, and having to write knowing that you're going to have an audience. Were you conscious of that? Did it feel after more than 15 years of plugging away that this was a make-or-break moment?

Jarvis Cocker: Yeah, very much so. The knowledge of that really affected the way that record turned out and the kind of songs that went on it. I was very excited, you know. I'd been waiting for my moment. I didn't want it to slip away. So we did capitalize on that. And I suppose, you know, this record I've just done was kind of exploratory in a way, because I didn't really know what people would make of it. I feel like I've got a bit of a better handle on what people make of it now. And from playing it live, I feel I've got a vague idea of what I'd like to do next. But I haven't done it yet, so it's pretty hard to talk about it, I suppose.

Sorry, I've been eating a lot of nuts during that.

Pitchfork: I was worried it had been 45 minutes of nothing but chocolate.

Jarvis Cocker: No, I've moved on to almonds. Have you been feeling sick through the whole interview then, thinking he's laid there...

Pitchfork: Right, you're on the couch with bon bons or a box of Milk Tray talking about your sluggish output.